MENU TITLE: Child Development-Community Policing: Partnership in a Climate of Violence.
Series: OJJDP
Published: March 1997
23 pages
49,937 bytes
Child Development-Community Policing: Partnership
in a Climate of Violence
Steven Marans, M.S.W., Ph.D.
Miriam Berkman, J.D., M.S.W.
The New Haven Department of Police Services and the
Child Study Center at the Yale University School of
Medicine have developed a unique collaborative
program to address the psychological impact of the
chronic exposure to community violence on children
and families. The Child Development-Community
Policing (CD-CP) program brings police officers and
mental health professionals together to provide
each other with training, consultation, and
support, and to provide direct interdisciplinary
intervention to children who are victims,
witnesses, or perpetrators of violent crime. The
New Haven program serves as a national model for
police-mental health partnerships across the
country.
------------------------------
Children's Exposure to Violence
The experience of victimization by violence is far
too common among children in America, as evidenced
below:
o In 1994, almost 2.6 million youth ages 12 to 17
were victims of crime -- simple and aggravated
assaults, rape, and robbery (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, "National Crime Victimization Survey."
Unpublished table.).
o In 1994, an estimated 3.1 million children were
reported to public welfare agencies for abuse or
neglect. More than 1 million of those children were
substantiated as victims (Wiese and Dara, 1995).
o Homicide is the leading cause of death among
African American males ages 15 to 24 (Hawkins,
Crosby, and Hammett, 1994).
o A survey of inner-city high school students
revealed that 45 percent had been threatened with a
gun, or shot at, and one in three had been beaten
up on their way to school (Sheley and Wright,
1993).
In addition, an alarming number of children who are
not the direct victims of physical assault become
potential psychological casualties as they witness
violence both at home and in the broader community.
For example:
o In a study conducted at Boston City Hospital, 1
out of every 10 children seen in their primary care
clinic had witnessed a shooting or a stabbing
before the age of 6 -- 50 percent in the home and
50 percent in the streets. The average age of these
children was 2.7 years (Taylor et al., 1992).
o In a study of New Haven 6th, 8th, and 10th grade
students, 40 percent reported witnessing at least
one violent crime in the previous year (New Haven
Public Schools, 1992).
o In a survey of fifth and sixth grade students in
Washington, D.C., 31 percent reported having
witnessed a shooting; 17 percent had witnessed a
murder; and 23 percent had seen a dead body
(Richters and Martinez, 1993).
o Among males in some high schools as many as 21
percent reported seeing a person sexually
assaulted; 82 percent had witnessed a beating or
mugging in school; 46 percent had seen a person
attacked or stabbed with a knife; and 62 percent
had witnessed a shooting (Singer et al., 1995).
Children's exposure to violence and maltreatment is
significantly associated with increased depression,
anxiety, posttraumatic stress, anger, greater
alcohol use, and lower school attainment (Garbarino
et al., 1992; Martinez and Richters, 1993; Singer
et al., 1995; Cicchetti and Carlson, 1989).
Richters and Martinez (1993) produced substantial
evidence that parents tend to significantly
underestimate their children's exposure to
community violence as well as associated stress
symptoms. Recognition of and verbal dialog
regarding children's experience with violent events
were seen as the most likely ways to mitigate the
formation of stress symptoms.
Youth who are repeatedly exposed to multiple risk
factors -- for example, socially isolated,
impoverished, violence-ridden neighborhoods --
require the most "intensive integrated, sustained,
coordinated, and comprehensive intervention"
according to the recommendations of a consensus of
professionals in the field (Carnegie Council on
Adolescent Development, 1992a; Citizens Committee
for Children, 1993; Greene, 1996; Palmer, 1983;
Schorr, 1989).
In addition, as indicated by the following figures,
children who experience violence either as victims
or as witnesses are at increased risk of becoming
violent themselves:
o In an OJJDP-funded study of children in
Rochester, New York, children who had been victims
of violence within their families were 24 percent
more likely to report violent behavior as
adolescents than those who had not been maltreated
in childhood. Adolescents who were not themselves
victimized but who had grown up in families where
partner violence occurred were 21 percent more
likely to report violent delinquency than those not
so exposed. Overall, children exposed to multiple
forms of family violence reported twice the rate of
youth violence as those from nonviolent families
(Thornberry, 1994).
o In a survey of 30 incarcerated delinquent
adolescents in Connecticut, 83 percent reported
previously witnessing a shooting, 67 percent
reported witnessing a stabbing, and 53 percent
reported witnessing a killing. Sixty-three percent
of the respondents reported having been shot at and
50 percent reported having been stabbed (Vitulano
et al., 1996).
o In a survey of New York City's juvenile detention
facility, 79 percent had seen a person stabbed or
shot; 58 percent had a family member who had been
shot or stabbed; and 38 percent had been shot or
stabbed themselves (City of New York, 1993).
These children are of particular concern to law
enforcement as they perpetuate the cycle of
violence into the next generation.
Police officers, as the first responders on scenes
of violence and tragedy, have frequent contact with
the children and families most at risk as a result
of their exposure to violence. However, officers
ordinarily do not have the training, the practical
support, or the time to deal effectively with the
psychological aftermath of children's experiences
with violence. While mental health professionals
may be equipped to intervene to ameliorate the
psychological consequences of children's exposure
to violence, traditional, clinic-based therapists
often have no opportunity to treat these children
until months or years later, when they are
presented with entrenched symptoms such as school
failure or dangerous, disruptive, and violent
behavior. The CD-CP program, developed in New
Haven, Connecticut, brings police and mental health
professionals together to develop new,
collaborative approaches to problems that are
beyond the reach of either profession when working
in isolation. This opportunity is especially clear
in the context of the New Haven model of community
policing, which places officers on permanent
assignment in neighborhoods, expands their role in
building relationships with community residents,
and encourages their regular contact with children
and families in a range of nonconfrontational
settings.
------------------------------
Community Police Responses
At best, police can provide children and families
with a sense of security and safety through rapid,
authoritative, and effective responses at times of
danger. Often, however, children's contacts with
police officers arouse more negative feelings. For
example, the arrival of officers after a violent
event can reinforce a child's sense of being
unprotected and the feeling that those in charge
provide too little, too late. For many children,
particularly those in impoverished inner cities,
the police are seen as representatives of a
dominant, insensitive culture and quickly become
targets of children's anger toward a hostile and
uncaring society.
Community policing provides officers with
opportunities to minimize these negative
experiences and instead offer children positive
models for identification. Police officers who take
on a consistent, authoritative presence in their
neighborhoods are potential heroes for young people
for whom there are all too few prosocial adult
models. As community policing places individual
officers on long-term assignments in specific
neighborhoods and encourages them to work with
community residents to analyze and solve problems
before they erupt in lethal violence, children and
families come in contact with officers in a wide
variety of helping roles well beyond the context of
such traditional police functions as making arrests
or executing search warrants. As community policing
integrates officers within their communities they
become known as individuals, rather than by role,
and they come to know the people they serve as
individuals. These strategies allow officers to
develop relationships and assume roles in
children's lives that would not be possible in a
more impersonal, incident-driven policing system.
For example, following a child's exposure to a
serious incident of violence, regular contact with
a familiar beat officer can serve to increase the
child's sense of security, provide a prosocial
adult model for identification, and support the
child's family to obtain needed mental health or
other social services. Similarly, regular,
nonconfrontational contact with a neighborhood
officer may help some young delinquents to control
their impulses to engage in criminal activity and
to abide by court-imposed restrictions. As figures
of authority, police officers are also in a
position to broker services for families and to
coordinate the responses of other institutions. The
assumption of such expanded roles in the lives of
children also imposes new burdens on police
officers and requires new modes of training and
operational support.
The CD-CP program reflects and contributes to a
more general change in the approach to policing in
New Haven. In this model of community policing, the
establishment and maintenance of relationships
between community-based officers and community
residents is of central importance. As New Haven
officers have become part of the social landscape
of the neighborhoods they serve, they no longer
represent an anonymous target for the pent-up
frustration and rage felt by underserved and
disadvantaged community residents. Consequently,
both the physical risk to officers and officers'
feelings of apprehension in the community have
diminished.
The central focus on relationships between police
and community members has also resulted in other
markers of law enforcement success. When officers
know the community, they recognize that the
majority of citizens are law abiding and represent
potential partners for a better neighborhood. This
frees officers to focus more effective enforcement
efforts on the small number of career and violent
offenders. For example, after the 1991 inception of
community-based policing in New Haven, four major
drug gangs were targeted by a joint Federal/State
task force on drug enforcement. Relationships
between community patrol officers and residents in
neighborhoods most affected by drugs and associated
violence led to extensive intelligence that was
invaluable to the effective Federal prosecution and
long-term incarceration of high-level leaders in
all four gangs. Similarly, the New Haven police
focus on personal relationships as the core of
community policing has resulted in a 95-percent
closure rate of all homicide investigations.
------------------------------
Collaborative Responses
The CD-CP program is a partnership that developed
out of the shared concerns of New Haven police and
mental health professionals regarding the
experiences of children and adolescents exposed to
and involved in community violence. The program
aims to coordinate the efforts of community police
officers and mental health clinicians to reduce the
psychological burdens of violence on children and
families, community members, and mental health
professionals themselves. The CD-CP program is
closely related to and dependent on the
reorientation of the New Haven police to a
community-based policing philosophy. Through the
application of principles of child development and
human functioning to the daily work of neighborhood
police officers, the program provides officers with
an expanded frame of reference and more varied
options for intervening in the lives of children
and families exposed to violence. Similarly,
through a reorientation of the traditional
relationships between mental health clinicians and
police professionals, the program extends the roles
that mental health clinicians play in the lives of
the same children and families (Marans and Cohen,
1993; Marans et al., 1995; Marans, Berkman, and
Cohen, 1996).
The CD-CP program has become a foundation for
officers to broaden their roles as problem solvers.
The process of consultation and collaboration with
mental health and allied professionals breaks down
barriers to the idea that complex problems require
multiple solutions that involve new partners. As
the burden and problem-solving tasks are shared,
officers experience a greater sense of
effectiveness and are increasingly able to sustain
their engagement in the lives of children. When
problems can be assessed in the context of the CD-
CP partnership, intervention can not only take
place in a more timely fashion but also without the
fragmentation of services that so often leads to a
squandering of limited resources.
------------------------------
Program Outline
The CD-CP program model consists of interrelated
training and consultative components that aim at
sharing knowledge and developing ongoing collegial
relationships between police officers and mental
health professionals.
1. Child Development Fellowships for Police
Supervisors
Child Development Fellowships help provide
supervisory officers with the special psychological
expertise they need to lead a cohesive team of
community-based officers in a wide variety of crime
prevention, early intervention, and
relationship-building activities involving
children, families, and community agencies in their
individual neighborhoods. Child Development Fellows
spend 3 to 4 hours per week over the course of 3 to
4 months in the Child Study Center. Fellows
participate in a range of activities and
observations that familiarize them with
developmental concepts, patterns of psychological
disturbance, methods of clinical intervention, and
settings for treatment and care. Police supervisors
involved in the fellowship also provide basic
knowledge about police practice to their mental
health colleagues. A major goal of the fellowship
is to establish relationships between the fellows
and the child mental health professionals with whom
they will be collaborating in the future.
2. Police Fellowships for Clinicians
The Police Fellowship provides clinicians with
opportunities to spend time with police colleagues
in squad cars, in police stations, and in the
streets observing and learning directly from
officers about their day-to-day activities. This
exposure assists clinicians in understanding the
environment to which children and families are
exposed, the relationships between members of the
community and the police, and the various uses of
police authority in daily interactions with
community residents. Observing the realities of
officers' interactions with children provides a
framework for understanding the roles that officers
play in the psychological lives of children and
families and prepares mental health professionals
to intervene collaboratively with police partners
in cases referred through the consultation service.
Extended contact with police colleagues through the
fellowship also provides the basis for trust in the
ongoing working relationships on which the program
depends.
3. Seminar on Child Development, Human Functioning,
and Policing Strategies
The CD-CP seminar on child development, human
functioning, and policing strategies is a course
for police officers, mental health clinicians, and
related professionals (e.g., probation officers)
that is co-led by a team of clinical faculty
members and a police supervisor experienced in the
CD-CP program. The seminar meets each week for 1.5
hours over a period of 10 weeks. Using case
scenarios drawn from the experiences of the seminar
members and group leaders, the seminar applies
principles of child development to the daily work
of police officers to provide officers and
clinicians with knowledge and a sense of personal
empowerment to intervene positively with children
and families. Exposure to developmental principles
introduces officers to the importance of thinking
about children's development and their own
influence on children. Exposure to police
perspectives on children, families, violence, and
crime expands clinicians' understanding of the
children they work with and the role of legal
authority in containing children's responses to
violence.
4. Consultation Service
As community-based police officers become more
active and visible within their neighborhoods, they
establish more frequent contact with children and
families who are in danger or distress, including
victims or witnesses of violence, truants from
school, and teens involved with gang activity.
These neighborhood officers need a resource to turn
to for discussion, guidance, and an immediate
clinical response, especially when the child is in
great distress, as happens so often following
exposure to serious violence. The CD-CP
consultation service allows police officers to make
referrals and to obtain immediate clinical
guidance, especially in the aftermath of children's
traumatic experiences. Consultation service
clinicians and police supervisors experienced in
the program are on call 24 hours a day to discuss
difficult situations involving children and
adolescents. When a direct clinical response is
necessitated by the urgency of a child's distress
(e.g., a child who has just witnessed the murder of
a relative), a clinician will respond immediately
and may see the child and family at the clinic, the
police station, or the child's home. Less urgent
clinical meetings, referrals to other services,
coordination with other agencies, and regular
followup by both police and clinicians are also
arranged.
5. Program Conference
Police officers and clinicians who staff the CD-CP
program meet weekly to discuss difficult and
perplexing cases that arise from officers' direct
experiences in their neighborhoods and from the
consultation service. The case discussions provide
a forum for police, clinicians, and allied
professionals to examine cases from a variety of
perspectives in order to understand better the
experience of children and families exposed to
violence, to explore the limits of current
intervention strategies, and to develop improved
methods of collaboration and response. The
conference also provides a regular forum for
planning and evaluation of program activities and
for examining systemic, institutional, and
administrative issues. Police supervisors
representing all sectors of the city participate in
the program conference and bring to the discussion
the various concerns of community residents in
their districts.
------------------------------
Juvenile Justice Response
Many of the children and adolescents about whom
police officers and clinicians are most concerned
are those who have experienced chronic exposure to
violence and who are now becoming involved in
delinquent activities. To respond to these children
and adolescents, the CD-CP collaboration has
expanded to include representatives of the juvenile
justice system. In addition, the team's approaches
to intervention with this group of children have
expanded the use of legal authority to provide
external structure where internal and family
structures are lacking.
As a result of the placement of juvenile probation
officers in several New Haven neighborhoods, with
offices in the local community substations, police
officers, clinicians, and juvenile probation
officers have more closely coordinated their work
with young delinquents. In this context, the CD-CP
training and weekly conference has provided a
central forum for examining comprehensive
approaches to programmatic innovation as well as
case planning for individual juveniles. As a result
of this planning process, neighborhood police
officers and juvenile probation officers
collaborate in the supervision of young offenders
by regularly sharing information about children and
adolescents on probation and assigning police
officers to supervise some community service
projects. In addition, CD-CP clinicians provide
regular consultation to juvenile probation officers
and the local juvenile detention center regarding
the mental health needs of children and adolescents
involved in the juvenile justice system.
Results of the CD-CP Program's First 5 Years
The expected outcomes of the CD-CP program can be
generally stated as broadening the frames of
references that govern the work of the police,
mental health professionals, and additional
collaborators and that contribute to an increasing
array of coordinated responses to the witnesses of
community violence and to youth involved in the
perpetration of violence and other gateway criminal
activities that may involve or lead to violent
crimes. These outcomes may be indicated by:
1. Organizational changes in the provision of
police and mental health services.
2. Development of protocols and procedures for
responding to youth exposed to or involved in
violent and other at-risk, criminal activities.
3. An increase in the number of cases in which
consultation and coordinated interventions occur.
4. An increase in the number of collaborations with
schools, child welfare, probation, etc., for
primary prevention and intervention.
5. Police officers' greater knowledge of the
experience of children and greater appreciation for
the potential benefits of collaborative
intervention.
6. Clinicians' increased knowledge of policing
strategies and practices and greater appreciation
of the potential therapeutic value of police
authority.
7. Implementation of a protocol for regular
tracking and monitoring of children referred to the
consultation service across a variety of domains,
including exposure to additional violent incidents,
involvement in delinquent activities, and
experience of posttraumatic symptoms.
Training
Since the CD-CP program began formal operation in
January 1992, the entire department has received
orientation and training regarding program goals
and utilization of on-call and referral services; a
range of inservice training related to CD-CP
principles and practice has been presented;
approximately 250 officers have completed the
10-week CD-CP seminar; the assistant chief of
police and 39 supervisory sergeants and lieutenants
have completed the Child Development Fellowship and
continue to attend the weekly Program Conference; 8
Child Study Center faculty members have completed
the Police Fellowship; and an elective for mental
health professionals in training has been
developed.
Referrals and Consultations
The Consultation Service has received approximately
350 referrals regarding more than 600 children.
Calls to the Consultation Service have concerned
children of all ages who have been involved in a
variety of violent incidents as victims, witnesses,
or perpetrators, both in their families and in the
larger community. Children who have been referred
have been seen both individually and in groups in
their homes, police stations, hospitals, schools,
and the Child Study Center. In addition, formal
protocols have been developed regarding such
practices as notification of the Consultation
Service in critical incidents involving children as
victims, witnesses, or perpetrators; distribution
of informational pamphlets describing the
psychological impact on children of their exposure
to violence and the availability of assistance
through the CD-CP program; and routine followup by
neighborhood officers to ensure the security and
stability of families exposed to violence.
The results of the CD-CP program can also be seen
in the following representative examples of cases
referred by police to the Consultation Service:
o A mother and two children, ages 2 and 10, were
present when a relative was shot to death through
the door of their apartment. The district
supervisor, a CD-CP fellow, offered a referral for
mental health services and also provided the mother
with his beeper number. The supervisory sergeant
accepted daily calls from the mother, during which
he provided her with information regarding the
family's protection from reprisal and reminded her
that clinical support was available. With the
ongoing support of the sergeant, the mother was
able to accept the mental health referral for
herself and her children. After intensive
treatment, both children are functioning well in
school and the mother was able to relocate her
family to a safer neighborhood.
o A woman was stabbed to death by her estranged
boyfriend in the presence of her eight children.
CD-CP clinicians responded to the scene, provided
acute clinical assessments of the children, and
consulted with relatives and police as to how to
tell the children their mother was dead. Police
conducted followup visits to the family, providing
practical recommendations for the security of the
home and information regarding the status of the
prosecution. The efforts of police, mental health,
child welfare, and home-based support
professionals, coordinated by the CD-CP team,
allowed the children to remain together rather than
be dispersed to multiple foster homes. CD-CP
clinicians evaluated each of the children and
engaged several members of the family in long-term
psychotherapy. All of the children are currently
attending school. Symptoms of anxiety, depression,
and aggressive behavior have diminished.
o A 15-year-old boy was robbed at gunpoint by two
men. In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, he
was too shaken to say anything to police about what
had happened. Officers referred him for an urgent
clinical evaluation, which took place at the local
hospital. During the course of the clinical
interview, the boy reported wanting to get a gun
and take revenge. By the end of the interview,
however, he had recovered sufficient memory of the
events to become an effective aid to investigating
detectives, who were then able to arrest the
robbers. Local community-based officers established
regular contact with the boy, supporting him in the
maintenance of his good school record and deterring
an early-stage involvement with neighborhood drug
dealers.
o A 14-year-old boy was involved in leading a group
of other teens in a series of beatings and criminal
mischief that terrorized his neighborhood. Although
police officers were aware of his activities, they
were unable to obtain sufficient evidence to arrest
him. CD-CP officers and clinicians convened a
series of meetings regarding community safety,
which were attended by local officers, school
officials, juvenile probation, clinical
consultants, and community leaders. As a result of
the meetings, police obtained more effective
cooperation from the community and eventually
arrested the boy. The CD-CP program conference
provided a forum for case planning, and the
collaborative group recommended close probation
supervision to the court. Under strict supervision,
the boy's criminal activities were curtailed, and
he returned to school. Throughout his probation,
police and probation officers maintained close
contact to monitor his behavior.
o A 12-year-old boy was arrested 8 times for auto
theft. He had been truant from school more days
than not over a 2-year period. When the boy's cases
were finally adjudicated, he was referred to a
pilot project, developed and coordinated by the CD-
CP program, in which strict probation supervision
is supplemented by community service, home-based
case management, recreational activities, and group
therapy. The boy returned to school and has not
been rearrested in 4 months. Friends from his
neighborhood ask to come with him to group
activities.
o Following the shooting death of a 17-year-old
gang member, there was good reason for concern
about retaliation and further bloodshed. In the
days that followed the death, grieving gang members
congregated on the corner where the shooting had
taken place. Efforts at increased presence and
containment took the form of police,
neighborhood-based probation officers, and
clinicians spending time on the corner listening to
gang members' express their grief. As one senior
police officer put it, "We could show our concern
for their trauma by being with them, lending an
adult ear to their misery. Alternatively, we could
put more officers on the street, show them who's
boss, and with a show of force, sweep them off the
corner as often as necessary. . . .We could then
offer them an additional enemy and wait for them to
explode." At this crucial moment, the police did
not assume the role of enemy. They did not serve as
a target for displaced rage or, in confrontation,
offer an easy antidote to sadness and helplessness.
Rather than exacting "payback" in blood, the
typical gang response, the gang discreetly assisted
the police in making a swift arrest in the
shooting. As one gang member, the brother of the
victim, put it to a neighborhood cop, "You were
there for us; that helped. . . ."
Juvenile Justice Responses
Because of their powerful and positive experience
with the addition of juvenile probation to the CD-
CP program, the group has also developed a pilot
intervention project that applies the program's
collaborative principles to community-based work
with adolescents who are beginning to engage in
delinquent activities. This Gateway Offenders
Program brings together community-based police
officers, community-based probation officers, CD-CP
clinicians, school officials, and case managers to
provide coordinated, comprehensive, and structured
assessment and intervention for a small group of
juvenile offenders who are at high risk of
escalating criminal involvement and removal from
the community. Probation and police officers
provide the external authority necessary to contain
program participants through intensive supervision,
frequent monitoring, and the imposition of variable
sanctions for violations. In close collaboration
with these figures of authority, clinicians,
educators, and case managers provide a range of
educational, therapeutic, and recreational
interventions, including life skills and conflict
resolution training, community service projects,
afterschool activities, wilderness experiences,
group psychotherapy, and coordination with
participants' parents. In this context, clinical
evaluations and treatment are not seen as an
alternative to judicial action but as part of a
coordinated response. In the first 4 months of the
project, only 1 of 15 participants has been
rearrested for new criminal behavior (Juvenile
Services Unit, New Haven Department of Police
Services).
Since the implementation of the CD-CP program,
there have been significant changes in police
approaches to juvenile delinquency and
corresponding changes in results. Based on
community officers' familiarity with New Haven
neighborhoods and the coordination of their efforts
with community-based juvenile probation officers,
there are no outstanding warrants for the arrest of
juveniles in New Haven (Juvenile Probation
Division, New Haven County). In addition, while New
Haven currently refers twice the number of juvenile
offenders to the juvenile justice system, it sends
only half the number of juveniles to correctional
facilities as Hartford, and three times fewer than
Bridgeport. This suggests that, in the community in
which the collaboration was developed, alternatives
to incarceration have increased significantly.
Truancy Intervention
The CD-CP program has also had an impact on rates
of truancy in New Haven. As an outgrowth of the
police-mental health collaboration, police have
increased their involvement with the New Haven
public schools. Teams of community-based officers
and dropout prevention workers canvass New Haven
neighborhoods during school hours, approaching
suspected truants, identifying them, taking them to
school, and contacting school personnel and parents
about their attendance and other school-related
problems (e.g., fighting, drug or gang involvement,
etc.). Responding to reports from the daytime team,
evening shift officers follow up with visits to the
children's homes, discussing truancy issues with
both the student and his or her parents. For many
parents, these visits mark the first time that they
become fully aware of the extent of a child's
truancy. The first visit is followed by others if
the student continues to miss school and
contingencies are developed with parents, school
officials, mental health professionals, probation
officers, and social service workers who are
already involved or may need to be involved with
the youngster and his or her family. With a mixture
of authority, psychological sophistication, and
persistence, officers involved in the truancy
reduction efforts have been enormously successful.
In the first 6 months of operation, the truancy
initiative accounted for a reduction of 20,000
unexcused absences. In one urban middle school,
daily unexcused absences have decreased from more
than 120 to fewer than 70 (New Haven Schools). It
is anticipated that the decrease in truancy will,
in turn, result in a reduction in criminal activity
in New Haven, where police have estimated that
juveniles were responsible for 60 percent of auto
thefts (Juvenile Services Unit, New Haven
Department of Police Services).
Program Evaluation Research
The nature of the collaboration, and the clinical,
consultative, and specialized police work that
occurs within the collaboration, is a challenge to
document reliably and consistently. CD-CP research
staff have developed a comprehensive electronic
case and activity recording system that is the
centerpiece of data collection. This system allows
program personnel to enter detailed information
describing the nature of each case and the response
to that case, information regarding the event and
the roles of children with regard to that event
(e.g., witness, victim, perpetrator, etc.),
characteristics of the home and school of children
served, diagnostic and evaluation data,
intervention data, functional outcome measurement,
and other clinical and police activities. An
interview protocol has been developed for a
retrospective study of children seen in the first 4
years of the consultation service, which will
investigate children's general developmental
status, posttraumatic responses, exposure to
additional episodes of violence, and subjective
experience of the CD-CP intervention. In addition,
surveys have been developed to measure changes in
the attitudes and practices of police officers and
mental health professionals as a result of their
involvement in the collaborative program.
------------------------------
Program Replication
The CD-CP program is a national model that is now
being replicated under an OJJDP grant in four
cities: Buffalo, New York; Charlotte, North
Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland,
Oregon. Additional, privately funded program
replication efforts are under way in Baltimore,
Maryland; Framingham, Massachusetts; and Newark,
New Jersey. A CD-CP program manual, The Police
Mental Health Partnership: A Community-Based
Response to Urban Violence (Marans et al., 1995),
has also been developed with OJJDP support.
The Program Replication Process
While each police-mental health partnership will
develop its own unique attributes based on the
specific needs and resources of the community in
which it operates, the CD-CP program model assumes
that each new collaborative program will adopt the
basic program elements described in this bulletin.
CD-CP program staff have been intensively involved
in providing training, consultation, and technical
assistance to developing programs. The following
points highlight the requirements for effective
implementation of the program model, based on the
experience of the program's developers.
1. Institutional Investment
Because the CD-CP program seeks to achieve
fundamental change in the operations and the
climate of the police department and a
collaborating mental health agency, the leadership
of both institutions must commit themselves to a
process of questioning and modifying traditional
practices and be prepared to support their
respective staffs in the implementation of
collaborative approaches to intervention with
children and families exposed to and involved in
violence in their community. Issues of time, money,
staffing, program expectations, and evaluation
should be identified and addressed at the outset.
In many of the communities currently involved in
the replication project, a single sector of the
city has been selected to begin a program pilot.
2. Participating Police Department
The CD-CP program model builds on the philosophy of
community policing and therefore requires that the
participating police department have implemented
community policing strategies or be engaged in the
process of their implementing, particularly with
regard to children, adolescents, and families. The
program also requires that the policing agency be
committed to (a) allowing sufficient time for
supervisors and rank and file officers to
participate in CD-CP training (approximately 15-20
hours for each seminar and 40 hours for CD-CP
Fellowship training); (b) allowing time for
supervisors centrally involved in the program to
act as seminar leaders and to maintain
participation in a weekly program conference; and
(c) providing observation and training experiences
for mental health professionals involved in the
program (e.g., ride alongs, short courses in
policing practice).
3. Participating Mental Health Agency
The CD-CP program requires a mental health
collaborator with staff who are (a) experienced in
the evaluation and treatment of children,
adolescents, and families, including individuals
exposed to criminal violence and other traumatic
events; and (b) experienced in teaching and
training other professionals in child development
principles. The program requires the mental health
agency to provide opportunities for police officers
to observe children in different clinical settings.
The mental health institution also must provide
partial salary support for participating staff
(three or four clinicians to start) to spend
sufficient time observing and meeting with police
colleagues, responding to emergency calls from the
police for consultation, and co-leading the CD-CP
seminar. Funding is not required for ongoing mental
health treatment; public benefits, private
insurance and/or out-of-pocket payment should be
available.
4. Other Participating Institutions
Developing collaborative programs may wish to
include other institutions that are centrally
involved in addressing the needs of children and
families exposed to violence such as juvenile
probation, schools, or child welfare agencies. In
considering expansion of the CD-CP model, program
developers should take into account both the
benefits to be derived from a broader coordination
and the difficulties associated with developing and
maintaining a more complex set of institutional and
personal relationships.
5. Training, Consultation, and Technical Assistance
for Developing Programs
Staff of the New Haven CD-CP program are available
to provide a program of training and technical
assistance to developing programs. Consultation
begins with the heads of the participating agencies
developing clear goals for the collaborative
program. Agency leaders then identify a small
working group of community policing supervisors and
mental health clinicians who will be responsible
for implementing the police-mental health
collaboration in their community and who will work
closely with the CD-CP consultants. Members of the
working group attend a series of intensive meetings
and observations, co-led by New Haven police
supervisors and Child Study Center clinicians.
These meetings provide a comprehensive introduction
to the CD-CP program and a forum for considering
the steps needed to adapt and implement the program
in each replication site. Following the New
Haven-based training and consultation meetings, CD-
CP consultants provide ongoing on- and off-site
technical assistance to guide and support the
developing new programs. In addition, CD-CP
consultants teach and implement procedures for
standardized data collection that serve the program
evaluation research. A national network of CD-CP
programs facilitates sharing information about the
process and results of the interdisciplinary
collaboration through conferences, newsletters, and
other means.
6. Program Evaluation Research
To facilitate consistent data collection across the
replication sites and to permit comparisons among
the sites, CD-CP consultants will provide personnel
in each developing program with copies of the data
collection software and survey instruments designed
to evaluate the collaborative program (described
above). CD-CP staff will provide technical
assistance in implementing the data collection and
will analyze and report survey results.
One of the fundamental goals of the CD-CP program
is to broaden and shift the perspective of officers
and clinicians participating in the collaboration.
It is believed that officers develop greater
knowledge of child development, insight into
psychological contributions to human behavior and
the implications for policing, a capacity to
reflect on and consider a broader range of options,
an awareness of the experience of children, an
understanding of and favorable attitude toward
mental health personnel, and the merits of
interventions that emphasize structure, authority,
and/or clinical service. Similarly, it is believed
that clinicians acquire knowledge of policing and a
greater appreciation for the role of police
officers in development and therapeutic
intervention, the therapeutic value of structure,
and the value of mental health consultation to law
enforcement. It is changes of this sort that make
collaboration possible and presumably result in
benefits to children and families in the community.
In order to evaluate these changes, CD-CP staff
have developed two surveys that provide a
comprehensive assessment of officer and clinician
knowledge, attitudes, and assumptions as noted
above as well as overall satisfaction with the
program. Administration of the surveys in the
replication sites will allow the program evaluators
to follow the development of officers and
clinicians over time within each site and also to
compare across replication sites. Additional
measures of program replication outcome in the
various sites will include changes in policing and
mental health protocols, numbers of referrals,
attendance at collaborative meetings, participation
in collaborative training seminars, and outcome
measurements related to the children served.
Further information about the CD-CP program can be
obtained from:
Colleen Vadala, Administrative Assistant
Child Development-Community Policing Program
Yale Child Study Center
47 College Street, Suite 212
New Haven, CT 06510
203-785-7047
OR
Bob Hubbard, Program Manager
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention
U.S. Department of Justice
633 Indiana Avenue NW., Room 707
Washington, DC 20531
202-616-3567
------------------------------
References
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Victimization Survey." Washington, DC: Bureau of
Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs,
U.S. Department of Justice. Unpublished table.
Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. 1992. A
Matter of Time. Woodlawn, MD: Wolk Press.
Cicchetti, D., and V. Carlson. 1989. Child
Maltreatment: Theory and Research on the Causes and
Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect. New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press.
Citizens' Committee for Children. 1993. Keeping
Track of New York's Children. New York, NY:
Citizens' Committee for Children.
City of New York. 1993 (August). Juvenile detention
alternatives initiative.
Garbarino, J., N. Dubrow, K. Kostelny, and C.
Pardo. 1992. Children in Danger: Coping With the
Consequences of Community Violence. San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass.
Greene, M.B. 1993. Chronic exposure to violence and
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Hawkins, D.F., A.E. Crosby, and M. Hammett. 1994.
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of Black American Health: The Mosaic of Conditions,
Issues, Policies and Prospects. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press.
Marans, S., et al. 1995. The Police Mental Health
Partnership: A Community-Based Response to Urban
Violence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Marans, S., and D. Cohen. 1993. Children and
Inner-City Violence: Strategies for Intervention.
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NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Marans, S., M. Berkman, and D. Cohen. 1996. Child
Development and Adaptation to Catastrophic
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Mental Health of Children in War and Communal
Violence. R. Apfel and B. Simon, eds. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Martinez, P., and J.E. Richters. 1993. The NIMH
community violence project II: Children's distress
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56:22-35.
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Palmer, T. 1983. The `effectiveness' issues today:
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Schorr, Lisbeth B. 1989. Within Our Reach. New
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477-482.
Taylor, L., B. Suckerman, V. Harik, and B.
McAlister-Groves. 1992. Exposure to violence among
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------------------------------
From the Administrator
Too many of our Nation's children are falling
victim to pervasive violence. Even young people who
do not bear the physical scars of domestic and
societal violence are often emotional casualties.
The tragic consequences to children of chronic
exposure to violence are considerable. They include
depression, anxiety, stress, and anger. Alcohol
abuse, academic failure, and the increased
likelihood of acting out in a violent manner are
part of the costly legacy left by a climate of
violence.
With the support of the Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, the New Haven
Department of Police Services and the Yale
University Child Study Center have established a
program that addresses the adverse impact of
continuing exposure to violence on children and
their families, and attempts to interrupt the cycle
of violence impacting so many of our children.
Reflecting New Haven's commendable commitment to
community policing, the Child Development-Community
Policing Program brings law enforcement and mental
health professionals together to help children who
are victims, witnesses, and even perpetrators of
violent acts.
I am pleased to present this promising model of
professional partnership for your consideration.
Shay Bilchik
Administrator